ShadowBot is a Steemit bot that automates many of the actions on your account from managing up voting the best content, automatically following back users that follow you, as well as providing insight into the performance of your account!

ShadowBot only needs your Private Posting key, which is stored in an encrypted wallet outside our primary web interface. In addition, your Posting Key only allows voting, following and posting on behalf of your account. ShadowBot has no access to any funds attached to your Steemit account. Read more at steemit.com about your Key Types here

Yes, in order for ShadowBot to operate and place votes (among other features) for you while you are offline, we store your Private Posting Key in our encrypted wallet. (See above for security concerns)

On steemit.com in your account when logged in navigate to "Wallet" then "Permissions", you will see a series of keys. The first key labled "Posting" is the key you are concerned with. There will be a button to the right (possibly bottom on mobile) that says "Show Private Key". Click that button. The key will reveal (it starts with a "5"). That is your Private Posting Key and what you need to login and use ShadowBot

Shadow Queue (formerly known as the Shadow Pool) is ALL the posts from EVERY member (Shadow Caster) weighted by their rank and up voted based on our rules (only 1 up vote per member from each other member every 24 hours).

Shadow Rank is a great way to see how you are adding value to the Steemit community. As you author high value posts, your Shadow Rank will go up. Likewise, if you author countless spam posts that yield no value you will see your Shadow Rank fall. Shadow Rank starts at 1 and continues to grow with your usage of Steem! Your Shadow Rank helps determine how much Voting Power from other Shadow Casters your posts will get. (see Shadow Divider)

Each Shadow Caster is limited to 1 up vote from any other Shadow Caster in any given 24 hour period. This means Shadow Bot will never cause your account to up vote more than one post, in any 24 hour period, created by the same author. Simply put, 1 vote from you, per author, per 24 hour period. No member of ShadowBot will get more than a single up vote every 24 hour period.

Shadow Rank is calculated based on a weighted average of your most recent author performance, your down votes in the previous week, your current Steem Power and how often you allow ShadowBot to vote on your behalf by minimizing or eliminating your own manually up voting behavior.

ShadowBot works on a pool mentality. Every Shadow Caster is given a position in the Shadow Queue prioritized by their Shadow Rank. Authoring high value posts will increase your Shadow Rank leading you to see more of your posts receiving priority in the Shadow Queue.

ShadowBot is designed to maximize your Voting Power each day utilizing the Shadow Queue. ShadowBot will only vote when your Voting Power reaches 100% or every 5 hours, whichever comes first, and will only consume ~2% per voting session (see recharge time below).

Your Voting Power recharges at a rate of 0.000228898% per second or about 20% per 24 hour period. ShadowBot uses this trickle recharge feature to spread your voting out over each day to maximize your Voting Power to votes per day!

NO! The concept of ShadowBot is to develop a Shadow Queue filled with Shadow Casters and good authors that contribute to the Steemit community! Any solicitations for voting by ShadowBot will be ignored.

ShadowBot only displays information related to activity ShadowBot performs on your account. As we expand the capabilities of ShadowBot we may include this feature but for now this is not a priority for ShadowBot.

Auto Follow Back is a ShadowBot feature that will automatically follow back any user on Steemit that follows your account! This is a great way to build a network of people that actually want to see what you are posting! You will need to enable this feature since by default Auto Follow Back is turned Off.

Fractional Voting allows those over the Fractional Voting Threshold (see below) to cast votes with less than 100% stength. This allows our internal systems to allocate votes fairly to all regardless of their Steem Power! Think of it this way, Someone with 100,000 SP is going to give more at even 1% power than that person could give back having only 28 SP. This metric helps us keep everything operating as we designed. Feeding the minnows and salmons, promoting good content, while giving dolphins and whales a chance to boost smaller fish, earn and contribute back to the steemit community!

The Fractional Voting Threshold is currently 1500 SP. This is the minimum Steem Power your account must have in order to cast votes less than 100% power. All accounts below this threshold will automatically up vote using 100% power.

The Shadow Divider is an internal metric used by ShadowBot that is adjusted as needed. Your Shadow Rank is divided by the Shadow Divider to determine the amount of up vote strength you receive from other Shadow Casters that are above the Fractional Voting Threshold. All Shadow Casters below the Fractional Voting Threshold will up vote your posts at 100% in the order they appear in the Shadow Queue.

The Shadow Divider is currently 7. Shadow Divider is the amount your Shadow Rank is divided by for Up Vote Strength (rounded down). Example: If your Shadow Rank is 10 and the Shadow Divider is 4, your posts will receive 2% strength up votes {floor(10/4)=2}.

ShadowBot is able to provide this service FREE of charge, through donations (both sbd and time). All funds generated through posts ShadowBot creates on steemit are used to fund development and promotions/prizes as well. Every person that has helped develop ShadowBot through code or other means has been a member and benefited and contributed back to the community! ShadowBot doesn't do what ShadowBot does for ShadowBot. ShadowBot does what ShadowBot does because ShadowBot is ShadowBot!